Looking for tips on improving full-text search quality in Postgres

Hi all -

When I have a need for both sophisticated database querying and full-text search, I'd rather not stand up a technology stack with multiple tools (e.g., Postgres and Apache Solr, or Postgres and ElasticSearch with a zomboDB bridge). So I've been looking at the Postgres full-text search capability, and comparing it to Apache Solr. My experience so far - which has not been entirely anecdotal, but hasn't amounted to a formal TREC-style evaluation - is that Postgres full-text search, in any ranking/normalization configuration I can create, is reliably worse than Solr. Now, I understand that the whole point of Solr is search, and this is a sideline for Postgres, but I'd like to figure out how close Postgres can get, and while I'm knowledgeable about search technologies, I'm not an expert. And I've looked for information on the Web about comparing Postgres search to other search capabilities, and everything I've found so far is extremely basic.

Does anybody have any pointers to resources (people, sites, journal articles, blogs, etc.) which are deeply knowledgeable about this comparison?

Thanks in advance -
Sam Bayer
The MITRE Corporation
sam(at)mitre(dot)org